Indiana Jones and the Dinosaur Eggs (3 page)

Then the beat of the props increased and the drag of water against his body stiffened. The submarine had cleared the passage. Indy unlashed himself from the gun. He felt the deck of the submarine slide at an angle beneath his feet as it executed a lazy turn to point the bow seaward.

Indy kicked off his shoes and made for air. The U-boat had only been at ten meters, and in a moment Indy popped to the surface. He gulped in a few lungfuls of fresh night air, got his bearings, then swam toward shore—all the while mentally cursing Rene Belloq.

Alecia Dunstin had mentally cursed Indy for the hour she had waited on the rock outside the entrance to the ruins of Forteresse Malevil, cursed him for not letting her accompany him into the depths of the cavern. When she had grown tired of cursing him, she made her way down to a cafe on the waterfront, drank coffee, looked at the full moon overhead, and waited some more.

Finally, she had begun to worry.

She was more relieved than surprised when she saw Indy swimming toward the shore, and she left her table and picked her way around to the shoreline at the base of the fortress. She waded out and met him in waist-deep water, and she threw his left arm around her neck as she helped him up the rocky bank.

Indy coughed and sputtered and sat down on the nearest boulder. He allowed his head to hang between his knees until the coughing subsided. Then he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and looked up at her.

"It got away," Indy said dejectedly.

Alecia sat down next to him and placed a hand on his leg. When Indy grimaced, she drew her hand away and was shocked to see that it was covered in blood.

"You're injured," she said.

"Shot," Indy said.

"My God," Alecia said. "Let's get you to a doctor."

"No." Indy felt the wound with tentative fingertips. "Most of the force was absorbed by the water. I can feel the bullet just under the skin. I can dig it out with a knife, I think."

"I still think we should get you to a doctor," she said. "Or a chemist, at least. That could become septic quite easily, you know."

"I'll live," Indy said.

"How did you get out here in the bay?" Alecia asked.

"I hitched a ride on a German submarine. Belloq sold the skull to the Nazis. There, you can still see the wake of the U-boat in the moonlight. It's running shallow, and if you look sharp, you can see the periscope and radio aerials bristling above the water."

"It looks like it's stopped," Alecia said.

"Um." Indy took out his pocketknife and slit open his pants leg to better inspect his wound. "I wish they'd sink. Do you know Belloq tried to kill me?"

"Of course," Alecia said. "Indy, I've been thinking. Maybe all of this business about a curse really is nonsense. Let's just pretend it never existed and stop this foolishness of trying to chase it down. Let the skull go."

"We've tried that already," Indy said.

"Don't pick at that," she said sternly. "That knife's not sterile."

She put her hand beneath his chin and lifted his face to hers.

"You're going to get yourself into a jam you can't get out of one of these days. A bullet that's too deep, or a beating that's too severe, or any one of a hundred other horrible things."

"Alecia, I almost had it," Indy said. "I was close enough to put my hands on it this time. But that submarine can't take it all the way to Berlin, and somewhere along the line there will be another chance—another chance at our life
together
."

"This is driving us both mad," Alecia said. "And we're doing it to ourselves. So let's approach this empirically. The hypothesis is that you are cursed to kill what you love, so let's put it to one last test. Show me how you feel."

"I can't," Indy said.

"Try," she said. "We're alone."

"But all the other times," Indy protested.

"Coincidence," Alecia said.

She leaned forward and allowed her lips to brush against his.

"What's wrong?" she asked. "Don't believe in the scientific method?"

"God help us," Indy said.

He took her in his arms and kissed her. The kiss had in it the force of a passion that had been denied for long summer months that seemed like aeons, a forbidden longing that had threatened to drive both of them mad.

"Now say it," Alecia said as she tore herself breathlessly away.

"You know how I feel."

"Say it, damn you."

Indy caught his breath.

"Alecia Dunstin," Indy said, "I luh—"

"Uh-oh," Alecia said.

She was looking over his shoulder toward the harbor. Indy turned. Far out, but closing fast, a pair of luminous tentacles were reaching toward them in the moonlight.

"Torpedoes," Indy said.

The furious counterrotating screws driving the pair of German self-propelled torpedoes were churning up bioluminescent plankton as they streaked across the harbor toward the base of the old fortress.

"So much for the scientific method," Indy said as he jerked Alecia to her feet.

They scrambled up the rocky slope, and when Indy saw that the torpedoes had nearly run their course, he ducked behind the biggest rock he could find and pulled Alecia down with him. But when the expected explosions did not come, Indy dared a glance over the top and saw that the wakes of the torpedoes had disappeared beneath the ancient fortress.

"They can't both be duds," Indy said.

As if in answer, the
whum-whump!
of a double explosion shook the fortress. Indy felt the power of the blasts reverberate deep in his gut, and he held Alecia tight until the rumbling subsided. When the shower of seawater and small stones subsided, Alecia sat up with a stunned look on her face.

"They couldn't have been aiming at us," she said. "Could they?"

"No," Indy said. "Just a reminder for Belloq. But if we had stayed down there and continued our—
experiment
—the concussion would have killed us both."

The explosion had lured a gaggle of tourists from the cafes and shops surrounding the Old Harbor to the ramparts enclosing Forteresse Malevil. They leaned far out and pointed at Indy and Alecia, chattering excitedly, and one of them thumbed through her phrase book.

"Don't talk to him," her husband said in a thick Chicago accent. "He looks like a bum."

"I'm going to ask him if he's hurt," the woman insisted.
"Ooh ahvay-voo maul?"

"We're all right," Indy called back.

"What happened?"

"The gas tank of our fishing boat exploded," Indy said. "I guess I shouldn't have been smoking around it. But we're not hurt, at least not badly. Thanks for asking."

"See there?" the woman said. "He speaks pretty good American for a bum."

"They all do," the man said. "It just proves they understand you, even when they stand flat-footed and stare at you like you were from the goddamn moon. Come on, Edith. I know drunken bums when I see them. Probably wasn't even their boat. Throw them some change and let's go."

The woman opened her purse and tossed a handful of coins over the battlement. The coins jingled upon the rocks between Indy and Alecia. Then the American tourists left without looking back, and the crowd dispersed.

"Why do people always throw coins toward me at times like this?" Indy mused.

"Well," Alecia said, brushing herself off and trying to regain her composure. She picked up a fifty-centime piece and stared at it.

On her cheek, a single tear glistened in the moonlight.

"Look at it this way," Indy said, wiping the tear away with his thumb. "We're a little richer. We know the scientific method works. And if we had been killed, at least we'd have died happy."

"But Indiana," she whispered. "That's the problem. I don't
want
to die. I'm sorry, but I can't do this anymore."

1
Dragon Bones

Princeton, New Jersey
Halloween 1933

Alone in his tiny office on the fourth floor of the Department of Art and Archaeology, Indiana Jones unscrewed the bottle of Scotch and regarded with contempt the pile of student papers and unanswered mail on his desk.

Outside, happy ghouls and goblins raced across the quad in search of new victims. But Indiana Jones's door was locked. He had even disconnected his telephone. He had a bellyful of superstition and did not want to be reminded that his belief in science remained unreconciled to his own bitter experience.

It had been a week since he felt like working, and as the stack of papers grew, the less he was inclined even to begin. Dragging himself to class every day had become an unendurable chore, and he had curtailed many of his lectures and substituted instead heavy reading assignments and guest lecturers. His students would have had cause for concern if his chief pinch hitter had not been Marcus Brody of the American Museum of Natural History.

Indy's routine now pivoted upon the arrival of the daily mail. Only then, as department secretary Penelope Angstrom handed him a new bundle each morning, did a glimmer of hope beat within his chest. Asking Miss Angstrom to shut the door on her way out, he would sort slowly through the letters without opening them. When he had finished he would sort through them again. Invariably, none were postmarked London.

The bottle of Scotch was the latest addition.

He had carried it back to his office and shut himself in this evening on the pretense of attempting to jump-start his flagging work ethic. He allowed himself a crooked smile as he imagined how his father, Professor Henry Jones, would react to this unpardonable breach of trust between a teacher and his pupils.

He poured some Scotch, swished the smoky liquid around in the glass, then raised it in a mock toast.

"Here's to you, Alecia," Indy said. "Or at least, your memory."

As he closed his eyes and brought the glass to his lips, there came a knock that was so soft that Indy was not sure that anyone was at the door. He paused, with the glass beneath his chin, and when the knock came again he shouted that the department was closed.

"I'm sorry," came a female voice. "But I'm looking for Dr. Jones."

Indy was relieved. Princeton was not coeducational, so it could not be a student seeking him out to demand what had become of this paper or that.

"Just a moment," he said, smoothing his hair and straightening his tie. He had almost made it to the door when he remembered the Scotch. He bounded back to his desk, recapped the bottle, and searched frantically for a place to hide it. Not a single desk drawer or file cabinet had enough space left. So he placed the bottle on the floor beside his chair, then snatched up the glass. He began to pour it into a potted plant beside the door, then stopped for fear it would kill the plant. In frustration, he tossed the contents down his throat and slammed the glass back onto the desktop.

"I'm Jones," Indy sputtered as he swung open the door. Then he coughed and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

Before him stood a woman in her middle to late twenties in a nun's habit. She stood stiffly, and her hands were folded over a paper sack in front of her. On the fourth finger of her left hand shone a golden band. At first Indy thought the habit was a Halloween costume, a prank that had been engineered to lift his spirits by one of his colleagues.

"Sorry, I don't have anything for your sack."

"I beg your pardon?"

When Indy saw the well-worn rosary that hung at her side, he knew he had made a serious mistake.

"I'm sorry," Indy said. "What can I do for you, Sister?"

"I apologize for disturbing you," she said. "I went to your home but found it dark, so I took the chance that you might be working late. I hope I am not imposing."

"Not at all," Indy said, feeling as if he were back in school. "That is, as long as you're not going to make me recite my Latin. Please, come in."

Indy removed a stack of books from a wooden chair and offered her a seat. When he returned to his own seat behind the desk, he inadvertently kicked the bottle of Scotch. It rolled beneath the desk and toward the center of the room.

"My name is Sister Joan," she said as the bottle came to rest at her feet. She picked it up and regarded the label. "Still celebrating the end of Prohibition? Personally, I could never stand the taste of this stuff—it was always like trying to swallow liquid smoke."

"It's not what you think," Indy said with a lopsided grin.

"Of course not," she replied, trying to find space on the desk to place the bottle. "Even the Lord enjoyed a bit of wine now and again."

Indy took the bottle from her and placed it on the windowsill behind him.

"Pardon me for intruding like this," Joan said. "I know of your reputation, and I have come here for help."

"Go on," Indy said.

Joan eyed him suspiciously.

"First, you should know that I'm being followed. Two cloaked figures dogged my trail to the very steps of this building, and I suspect they are still waiting outside. If you agree to help me, you may be placing yourself at a significant degree of personal risk."

"This is Halloween, Sister," Indy said. "There are people running about in all sorts of weird costumes."

"Yes, but these two men have been following me for more than a week. They ransacked my father's home in Connecticut, and I'm afraid they seriously injured our gardener when he got in the way. Broken ribs and a dislocated shoulder."